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By Root 699 0

” and later to Rome, Florence, Turin, and Venice. In each city he visited he played the tables and worked at his research into finance. The great public banking institutions of Italy had been born in the Middle Ages from the need to fund crusades, commerce, and war. By the late sixteenth century Venice’s state banks—the Banco di Rialto and the Banco del Giro—operated much like the bank in Amsterdam, which had followed the Venetian lead, accepting deposits in adulterated coin and issuing notes in “bank money” with the guarantee of the state. Law also learned much about foreign-exchange dealing in Venice. According to Gray, “he constantly went to the Rialto at change-time [when the exchange was open], no merchant upon commission was punctualler, he observed the course of exchange all the world over, the manner of discounting bills at the bank, the vast usefulness of paper credit, how gladly people parted with their money for paper, and how the profits accrued to the proprietors from this paper.”

Along with its bank, Venice had much to attract John Law and his beautiful companion. They arrived in time for the famous carnival, which began on Twelfth Night, when some thirty thousand foreigners invaded the city to enjoy a bacchanalian extravaganza of acrobatics, music, animal fights, fireworks, and dancing in the streets. According to one spectator, “Women, men and persons of all conditions disguise themselves in antique dresses, with extravagant music and a thousand gambols, traversing the streets from house to house, all places being then accessible and free to enter.”

Venice was famed for sex and gambling. The city dubbed “the brothel of Europe” had gambling houses, or ridotti, “where none but noblemen keep the bank, and fools lose their money.” One rueful English visitor described a typical soirée: “They dismiss the gamesters when they please, and always come off winners. There are usually ten or twelve chambers on a floor with gaming-tables in them, and vast crowds of people; a profound silence is observed, and none are admitted without masks. Here you meet ladies of pleasure, and married women who under the protection of a mask enjoy all the diversions of the carnival.” With Katherine at his side, Law presumably ignored sexual distractions and capitalized on the plentiful opportunities for making money instead.

By the end of his tour of Italy, his financial expertise had opened numerous doors: the Duc de Vendôme and the Duke of Savoy were among his royal friends. After ten years of economic research, he had accumulated formidable financial knowledge as well as £20,000 from gambling, moneylending, and foreign-exchange trading. Yet for all this he was dissatisfied. Perhaps ambition made moneymaking for personal gain seem no longer sufficiently satisfying. Perhaps the glamour of travel had dimmed and Katherine, tired with the discomforts of their itinerant life, was pressuring him to settle. Certainly by now his observation of banking systems in Amsterdam and Italy, coupled with what he had seen of London’s financial innovations, had fired within him a grand vision: he wanted to use his understanding and ingenuity for the benefit of the populace, to play a key part in Europe’s financial evolution.

Law’s interest in economy was leading him, like many others of his age, to reflect on the role of the state, or of large-scale enterprise, in national prosperity. He saw money as a scientist might an array of laboratory equipment and chemicals, as substance for experiment and a subject for theory. In this sense, he was reflecting the new, enlightened age. Just as the mysteries of mathematics and nature had been explained by the researches of scientists like Newton, Huygens, and Boyle, Law’s confident aim was now to use his knowledge to take on the challenge of experimenting with a nation’s fortune.

Scotland, the land of his birth, he decided, was where his ideas would be unveiled. In about 1704, according to Gray, he made the long journey home, leaving Venice “with his Madam and family” to journey “through Germany down to Holland